BLACK BED SHEET BOOKS IS NOW STAFFING & GROWING LIKE THE BLOB!
ATTN: We are growing rapidly and now currently seeking manuscript editors, proofreaders, marketing professionals, and able eyes to go through slush piles and submissions. Cover designers and artists are encouraged to query with links to samples of their work. If you have other related services to offer, we're all ears.
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER:
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Nicholas Grabowsky |
ABOUT BLACK BED SHEET BOOKS:
We began as Diverse Media in 2002 not long after the advent of Print On Demand made me realize that, after gaining the rights back to all my previous publications, I could be more in charge of my titles. I made a deal with Trancas international Films to put out a new special edition of my Halloween IV novelization with unlimited liberties, and then I began publishing local talent in Sacramento when I saw how easy it was. In 2008, I started Black Bed Sheet after yet another publisher of mine went the way of so many others and owed a lot of people money, and I went into it thinking I could do this the right way, and I'm a fervent believer that once you realize your lot in life, you best get familiar with every aspect of that lot, in this case taking a book from the ground up and doing something with it, particularly when it comes to first-time writers nobody's ever heard of before, to try and make them be somebody if their writing and ambition really hits me.
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"Inspiration and Horror, Baby!!!" |
OUR FAULTS/SHORTCOMINGS AND THE CHANGES WE'RE MAKING AS A RESULT:
I constantly lie to myself and believe it. I'm a professional writer, editor, web master, cover designer, marketer, manager, promoter, and for what seems like forever I've been running BBS all by myself, with the exception of authors who bring their own editors and artists etc to the table at their own insistence and my approval. Those things have helped. And for lack of funding, despite reaching out for interns and so forth, and because for some reason I punish myself being a workaholic with a dream of making it so I won't have to be anymore (I have no other job or source of income, I rely entirely on BBS) and inherently being independent I like doing things myself, I've been stumbling over my own feet in increasingly embarrassing ways. Here I am trying to impress, and despite my efforts I've come up with a handful of titles with poor editing. Readers that don't know any better, who haven't read all the exemplary titles we produce with perfection, with or without my personal editing, can and have read the few titles we've put out that for various reasons have serious editing problems and that really makes us look bad, like all our titles are like that, and that's far from the truth. So, now that we're selling more than we ever had, we are able to employ outside help. This, hands-down, is our most important change. Thus, we've already acquired a few and are looking for more.
Submissions are overwhelming. Thus, now that we're able, we're getting people to address each one.
I am also looking for foot soldiers, so to speak, that can market and help spread our good word.
One thing I haven't decided upon yet, as far as change is concerned, entails this: this is a business. It is a business where I invest in authors, based on what I feel is their merit, their talent, their ambition to promote themselves, and their conviction in signing with BBS to support BBS and exploit it and their book in every way possible, with great positivity and pride. My waking days are consumed with my authors, the money and time and effort and profound sacrifice in my personal life I daily give for them. One author who's published two books with me hit me up one day with "I'm getting ready to do a bunch of interviews for my books and I can't mention you in those interviews unless you tell me what you've done for me so I can tell them." If they don't already know how without me they wouldn't be doing those interviews, they'll never know. Another one, I helped an author that went through many publishers with the same book and I took a month of my time putting that book together and they bowed out three weeks before release not because the editing wasn't good enough but because my editing background wasn't good enough, and two weeks after parting ways they put their book up on Kickstarter.com to raise $2,000 for an editor and found a publisher a month later who put out my own edited version anyway. Another bought 500 authors copies from me and parted ways because he couldn't sell them all and his efforts selling his 500 copies couldn't compete with my trying to sell copies on my own. I also went through a great deal of working night and day for a long time developing a couple of books for authors who I had accepted and a few months after their book was published, they dropped the ball and left me to do all the work, and when the work wasn't good enough they gave me a multitude of reasons why.
So.....like any other business, I have to weigh whether my very valuable time is worth the bullshit I have to go through for those who disrespect and treat me like they're doing me a favor.
Because of these things and more, I lied again. I am not just a publisher. I put my daily life in service to authors, and in my accepting you, I in effect become a sort of employer. I am always up front and tell it like it is. If any author from this point forth has a problem with that, or makes it difficult for me to do my job, accuses me of playing favorites, doesn't happily and freely promote the man who took you on and first believed in you and gave you a step up in your career, you have absolutely no business being with me and I can and will let you go. It's not worth it to me, and I or anyone else can't possibly do any more than I already have, and I've done a huge, I say again, huge, credibility leap for you by just accepting you in the first place not to mention all the incredibly hard and laborious work in simply putting your book out.
Okay, so that's out of the way.
I suppose I said enough. For those of you who aren't editors, etc., and have works to submit, Black Bed Sheet Books is always open to hear you, and if we accept you, in a world where the industry is constantly changing, we are at work re-defining the industry itself.
We hope everyone who reads this gets what I'm saying, that good, credible people respond, and to all horror writers in particular. I speak with the confidence of a thousand of all the seasoned authorities in the genre that have done way beyond what I've ever done, and till my last dying breath my legacy is this, what I'm writing about. I used to be a preacher to thousands of people in my late teens in many fundamentalist churches, was labeled as a Jesus freak who laid hands on many people who fell down backwards before me and oohed and awed that I was so young doing that; in junior high I condemned the friends of mine who were into Michael Myers. Who'd ever believe I'd write the Halloween IV novel, all the other horror books, anything. It's a crazy life. But I know who I am, what I've become, and I like it. I'm passionate about it the likes of which few in this industry have ever seen.
My little hamster needs me. Gotta go. Time for lettuce.
---Nicholas Grabowsky
Black Bed Sheet Books
Arguably, the world's #1 publisher of independent horror fiction.